


back to self

by GabrielVincent



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Withdrawal, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GabrielVincent/pseuds/GabrielVincent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time was for research and John found him. The second time was personal, and only one person knew to look for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	back to self

_“THE JUNKIE DETECTIVE_ " screams the soaking wet Evening Standard trodden into the filthy pavement outside Belsize Park station. Jim Moriarty glances down as he steps over it and changes direction to walk back to his car.

Sherlock Holmes sits crouched over his kitchen table, a small metal dish held with tongs over a Bunsen burner. He almost laughs at the luxury of not having to use one of those dirty old spoons in the privacy of his own house.

John had left a belt in the flat, one of the few items that escaped the packing of his sparse belongings before he moved out. He hadn’t had the heart to rifle through Sherlock’s stuff and had left in a hurry. A month ago the belt had fit twice and a half round Sherlock’s upper arm; now, as he lies down on the couch with a quiet exhale, it fits almost four.

Jim arrives outside the building in Baker Street and takes a moment to adjust as he looks at the place for the first time in years. Breaking in is as familiar and easy to him as opening his own front door. He enters quietly despite increasing signs of the flat being empty. He almost doesn’t see Sherlock on the sofa for how still he is.

Unintentional curses fly from Jim’s mouth as he struggles to pull Sherlock off the couch and onto the floor. When he finally gets him down, almost into the recovery position, the energy seems to leave him like it’s been punched in the stomach. Sherlock’s head is in his lap, heavy in its lifelessness and Moriarty curls over it, clenching his eyes shut with the odd desire to be in denial of the situation.

Time passes strangely as he tries to do everything he supposes he ought to in a situation like this- only, he’d never anticipated the reality of a situation like this. He comes back to himself sitting next to this unconscious, sweating form in Sherlock’s bed. How things have changed since the last time he had the privilege, he thinks.

_“Come to baker street immediately"_ says Sherlock Holmes on the small screen of John’s phone. He gestures apologetically at it as Mary shoos him away, her lovely face warm with affection and understanding. He leaves their house smiling secretly to himself, hyper aware that he might possibly be the luckiest man in London. He wonders absently what Sherlock has planned for them today.

Moriarty jerks from his restless sleep as a door slams open.

“What the _hell_ are you-“

“You left him,” Moriarty says coldly, staring at John in the doorway. “Why did you leave him?”

John stares back in mortified confusion as Sherlock stirs slightly.

“Look what he _did_ ,” Moriarty whines, his voice suddenly plaintive and louder than he intended. He grabs a bowl from the table beside him and swiftly places it under Sherlock’s chin, who promptly vomits into it and closes his fluttering eyelids.

"I didn’t…I had no idea…" John mutters uselessly as Moriarty assesses him.

"You _did_ ,” comes the quiet reply, “you found him and you let him _lie_ to you and you _left him on his own_. You found him like this. You _knew_ -” Moriarty stops as his voice cracks slightly, breathes deeply and holds out the bowl to John. “Clean this and bring it back, please. I don’t want him to be on his own.” John takes it and leaves wordlessly.

As the kitchen tap is turned on, Jim hears a muffled _“fuck!”_ and the thud of a cabinet being kicked.

Moriarty doesn’t look up as John comes back and places the bowl next to him. John says quietly, “he thought you were dead. I suppose now we both know what that can do to a person,” and Moriarty closes his eyes.

John falls asleep in the chair opposite the bed. Jim sits up, still in most of his suit and passes a damp towel over Sherlock’s forehead. He had managed to change Sherlock’s stiff shirt for a pyjama top and put him under the covers, unsure of the exact temperature he was supposed to be at. He remembers a time when he would relish the rare opportunity to observe Sherlock’s sleeping face- it is in stark contrast to the nausea that overcomes him as he watches over this emaciated stranger whose very colour is unfamiliar.

When Moriarty opens his eyes his neck aches horrendously from having fallen asleep sitting up. He looks over at John, imagining that he’ll wake in similar discomfort. Sherlock seems to be soundly asleep next to him, his breathing refreshingly even and Jim hopes it won’t be long until he wakes up with the junk out of his system. What a sight they’ll make, he thinks, the two hapless victims to Sherlock’s insanity, standing guard like a couple of terrible angels at his bedside.

John shifts in his chair and wakes up, wincing as he tries to move his head.

“Do you want a pillow?” Moriarty offers.

“No thanks,” he yawns, glancing at his watch. “You know, I could take him to the hospital and no one would have to know about-” he gestures vaguely around them, “this,”

“He’s coming up, he’ll be alright soon,” Moriarty shakes his head tiredly. “You can leave if you want. I’ll stay here for however long...”

John seems to take a while to absorb this. “I’m sorry to be so…blunt, I suppose, but I think it’ll be a little while before I leave Sherlock vulnerable in _your_ hands,”

Moriarty narrows his eyes. “John Watson, if I didn’t think it would make him twice as bad as this,” he motions to Sherlock beside him, running a hand gently through his hair; a gesture that makes something cower guiltily in John’s stomach, “if I didn’t _know_ what would happen? I would skin you alive right _there_ for what you have done to him. I would do it in a second, because that is what I think you deserve for _leaving him_ like this.”

"Please…don’t," Sherlock’s voice sounds cracked and dry as he turns over, burying his face into Jim’s side. Jim quickly offers him a glass of water, tipping it gently as Sherlock accepts it.

"Jesus _Christ_ , Sherlock,” John breathes, sinking his head into his hands.

Moriarty shifts to put his arms around Sherlock’s shoulders, pulling him up next to him and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Sherlock allows himself to be held, relaxing into Jim’s touch and murmuring almost inaudible apologies into his arms. “I’m here,” Jim says quietly, “I’m alive and I’m here,” and John averts his gaze.

———————————————————————

John leaves, eventually, but he promises to be back soon. The moment he’s gone, Sherlock drags himself up to Jim’s level and kisses him deeply and desperately, his hands in a manic state of exploration as he appears to try and convince himself that Jim is real and beside him.

"My goodness Sherlock, I’ve never seen you so forward," Jim laughs, pulling himself back to look at the man in front of him. Sherlock’s face rapidly turns stony and focused and he holds Jim by the shoulders.

"You were dead," he says quietly, his strange eyes darting from place to place around Jim’s figure as though he could read the answer off his skin. The thought crosses Jim’s mind that he probably could, even with his pupils still horrendously dilated and his movements bleary. "I saw your body. I saw your head pouring out on the roof of the hospital. I felt your hands let go of mine and I had to make it look like it didn’t matter,"

"I had to-"

"You weren’t _lying_ , when you put that gun in your mouth. I know you lying, Moriarty, I know you lying and I know you insane and I know you scared and I know you irrevocably, _undeniably_ and that day I knew you dying."

Jim is unsure of where Sherlock is, in terms of lucidity and sobriety, for as much as he reacts like any junkie you could pluck from an alleyway, who could possibly tell what was in that junkie’s head to start with? He wonders if now really is the best time to start discussing all that mess of almost three years ago-

"You have been alive-dead and in my mind for every second since that day," Sherlock says, "and it has been agony."

There is no time like the present.

"I wasn’t expecting to wake up, Sherlock. I closed my eyes to the sound of you jumping off a _fucking_ rooftop and I did not want to wake up. Unfortunately, someone took that decision into their own hands; _et voila_ , here we are, the proverbial star-crossed lovers to a truly _astonishing_ degree of authenticity.”

Sherlock looks at him for a long time. “We aren’t lovers,” he replies dumbly, belatedly. He allows Jim to wrap his fingers around his own and Jim smiles with the first genuine feeling of content in a time period he can _finally_ stop counting. He kisses Sherlock’s forehead, his cheek, his nose, his bony hand. Sherlock insinuates himself closer in retaliation, burying his face into Jim’s neck as though he would wish nothing more than to suffocate there. His arm wraps around Jim’s waist, scrabbling to get under his shirt and spread open palms over this back, this chest, this familiar/unfamiliar potential hallucination that he may as well make the most of because he’s never been able to before. Jim bats a hand away as it slides thin fingers into his waistband, across his thigh, over his hip. “Stop that,” he mutters. “All these years I’ve been waiting to get Sherlock Holmes into bed with me and this is how it happens. You probably can’t even get it up, you stupid fucking _junkie_ ," he says, holding Sherlock’s wrists together too easily with one hand and wrapping the other around his shoulders.

"Don’t care," comes the muffled reply.

Moriarty leans his head into Sherlock’s shoulder, suddenly feeling pathetically lost at the idea that he’s found the man alive but not quite the same, runs his hands over Sherlock’s bare arms, just about skidding over the soft skin in the crook of his left elbow with his eyes closed to the idea that it is anything other than as pure and vulnerable as his right, and wonders if he has induced an irreversible change.

———————————————————--------------------------------------------------------

Days pass. John visits intermittently. They are closed for business, although Sherlock vehemently denies that it is anything to do with his own health and asserts loudly and often that John struggling with his guilt is no good reason to allow criminals in London to carry on exactly as they like.

No one mentions the criminal currently sharing his flat, especially not after John explains discreetly to Scotland Yard how effectively his presence appears to have stopped the need for regular searches on 221B.

Some days, Sherlock is as normal, typing up the results of experiments with perhaps even more zeal and dedication than usual, as though the world depends on the arrival of his next blog update. Other days, Sherlock clenches his fists as though he has been cuffed to his chair, and Jim comes to place calm hands on his shoulders and say,

“You do not need it,”

"I do not need it,"

"You do not need it because you are brilliant without it,"

"I do not need it because-"

"You are exceptional without it,"

"I do not need it because you are here,"

"You have never needed it,"

"I do not need it because _you are alive and you are here_ ,"

And Jim feels as though the wires of his heart are escaping, wrapping tightly around his lungs and tangling with his throat and he kneels down in front of Sherlock and wraps soft palms over the white of the clenched knuckles before him and whispers, “I am alive and I am here and so are you,”

And Sherlock’s fists uncurl underneath to turn over and grip Jim’s lovely hands until they feel like they will be stuck there forever and he meets Jim’s eyes with turbulent seas for irises and waits for him to continue: "and I will be alive and here for as long as you need me to be-"

"For as long as I am."

"For as long as you are."

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. unity mitford shot herself in the head and survived. i'm going with the idea that the same thing happened to moriarty only there's a personal headcanon implication there that he's definitely still in danger from the wound, although that's not mentioned here. come to your own conclusions, i suppose. 2. depiction of heroin use in 'his last vow' was mind bogglingly awful in my opinion so i wanted to write something a little more realistic although even this isn't hyper realistic but does anyone REALLY want to read documentary style writing on what would happen if sherlock holmes really was a heroin addict? (anyway he's meant to be on coke DO YOUR RESEARCH, writers) 
> 
> 3\. my headcanon will always be that sherlock and jim are soulmates and if they were ever to be together it would be much more likely that jim would give up crime for sherlock as opposed to sherlock taking up crime for jim. that's just always seemed way more realistic to me, given how kind of reliant on sherlock jim always seems to be. i also read their relationship as more ferociously dedicated to each other as opposed to ferocious TOWARDS one another although maybe that's just personal projections etc etc (and isn't everything?)   
> 4\. this was v much a cathartic exercise for me but i really hope someone enjoys it as well  
> 5\. i'm rosasasalisi on tumblr if anyone wants to know


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